George Papadopoulos Dies; Greek Coup Leader Was 80

George Papadopoulos, who headed a military dictatorship that dominated Greece in the late 1960's and early 1970's and which was widely reported to have tortured and imprisoned opponents of its rule, died yesterday in a hospital in Athens. He was 80.

The cause was a heart attack, Agence France-Presse reported. He had been in the hospital since August 1996, for treatment of cancer.

In 1967 Mr. Papadopoulos, then an army colonel, led a bloodless military coup, which overthrew a shaky parliamentary Government.

He was ousted from power late in 1973 by a new group of officers, whose own junta fell from power in 1974. In that year he was arrested. With constitutional government restored, he was put on trial.

He and 19 other figures in the coup were charged with treason and insurrection. At the time of the trial in 1975, he issued a signed statement to the press asserting that he had led the coup to save Greece from Communism and civil war.

He was convicted of both treason and insurrection. He was sentenced to death, but his sentence was reduced to life imprisonment. He was held in Korydallos Prison in Athens until he was transferred to the hospital three years ago.

He is survived by his wife, Despina. An earlier marriage ended in divorce.

The son of a village schoolteacher, Mr. Papadopoulos was born in the northern Peloponnesus. He graduated from his country's War Academy and was commissioned an artillery sublieutenant.

He served in the six-month Greek-Italian war that began late in 1940, fought in the Greek resistance movement while Greece was occupied by German forces later in World War II and saw action against Communist guerrillas in Greece after the war.

He was promoted to colonel in 1960. From 1959 to 1964 he was a staff officer in the Central Service of Information, the Greek equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency.

His coup was carried out early on April 21, 1967. As a British historian of Greece, C. M. Woodhouse, recounted in his 1985 book, ''The Rise and Fall of the Greek Colonels'': ''Zero hour for the military action was 0200. No one outside the conspiracy seems to have had an inkling of the threat. The King had gone to bed late in his country house. The American Ambassador, Phillips Talbot, was asleep at home. Senior officers of the C.I.A. appear to have suspected nothing.''

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And the Greek general who commanded the troops in Athens, but was not in on the plot, was out walking in the capital in the early hours and ''was amazed to see tanks moving through the streets, without any orders known to himself.''

Later that year Mr. Papadopoulos retired from the army with the rank of brigadier as part of an effort to make the Government seem more civilian. But it was dogged by criticism over human rights issues.

Nine months after the coup, on Jan. 27, 1968, an American lawyer, James Becket, and a British lawyer, Anthony Marreco, acting as representatives of Amnesty International, wrote a report after a month of investigation in Athens saying the Greek police had engaged in widespread torture of political prisoners.

The contention was denied by a spoksman for the post-coup Government, but charges of torture continued.

In 1970 Senator Claiborne Pell, Republican of Rhode Island, wrote, ''The Council of Europe has confirmed the allegations that I have been making on the Senate floor to the effect that the Greek regime has countenanced the use of torture as a matter of administrative practice to extract information from prisoners and to discourage men and women from engaging in any activity unsympathetic to the junta.''

Despite its repressive measures, and although a number of intellectuals and leftists left the country while it held power, Mr. Papadopoulos held on to power through several efforts to remove him. In December 1967, King Constantine II mounted an unsuccessful coup attempt, after which Mr. Papadopoulos took the title of Premier.

In 1968 he was almost assassinated. Navy officers tried but failed to overthrow him in 1973. In that year he set up a republic and took the title of President. He tried to give the new arrangement legitimacy. But his downfall ensued.

Correction: July 1, 1999, Thursday An obituary of the former Greek military dictator George Papadopoulos on Monday misstated the party affiliation of former Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, who criticized the Papadopoulos Government. He is a Democrat.